


cling to your hate (deal with the pain)

by seventeencrows



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: M/M, but like a tiny one, but then again, jacobi has an existential crisis, jacobi is angry and makes poor life choices, making out with kepler is a poor life choice, regardless of your emotional state at the time, the least romantic and most vague handjob
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-27
Updated: 2017-06-27
Packaged: 2018-11-19 17:01:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11317788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventeencrows/pseuds/seventeencrows
Summary: all that’s left, when you get down to the deep, dark, gory thick of it, is how fuckingangryyou still are.





	cling to your hate (deal with the pain)

**Author's Note:**

> would you believe i only ever wanted to write the one 2nd person fic? but now i have a draft for another one half done and came up with this one an hour ago and couldn't make it work in 3rd person and couldn’t get it out of my head so here you go
> 
> title is from the james baldwin quote, “i imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.”

she's dead, she's dead and you're not, you're not dead but you're not sure you were ever _alive_ in the first place, not sure you’re _you_ like you remember, with a mother and a father and a body that wasn’t forged in the deep-down gut of a fucking star—you weren’t hurt bad enough to put yourself back together when the stellar flare hit, you didn’t choke on your own spit and seize and shoot fire out your goddamn eyeballs but that doesn’t mean jack _shit,_ doesn’t mean you’re not one of _them,_ the other _them,_ the _them_ that sure as hell don’t come in peace. that doesn’t mean that you didn’t leave the real daniel jacobi outside the module to blister and scream and die, you _imposter,_ you goddamn fucking _coward—_

she is dead, maxwell is dead and minkowski is afraid and lovelace is a monster and eiffel is a douchebag and hera is useless and you are a cobbled-together trash heap of insecurities and doubts and bone-deep terror and _he_ is alive and you are so, so fucking _angry._

you’re back in your quaint little prison now, your honeymoon suite, after you’re all done crowding around the fireplace with auntie zhang’s old tales from the briny deep; you see the way eiffel looks at you when he locks you in, like he _feels bad,_ like he knows how much it must suck to be in here with him, with the guy who you thought gave a single, solitary fuck about you. who doesn’t even bother faking it anymore and you know what? you’re _fine,_ fucking peachy, goddamn wonderful because you don’t need him to point you in the right direction anymore, you don’t need to follow his goddamn plans or listen to his goddamn voice anymore because the last time you did that a part of you fucking died _(you’re dropping like flies here, daniel, your carbon copy gets a good set of grill marks in him and the very heart of you ends up with her skull doubling as a bullet holster, you’re on a goddamn roll),_ a part of you bit the bullet and it was the _wrong one—_

“penny for your thoughts?” he asks, and you see red so fast maybe your eyes are glowing after all, maybe you’ll sell whatever piece of you they’ll buy if only you get the chance to take his other hand, his trickster tongue, that stupid fucking smile right off his face. he’s not even _looking at you_ , got his eyes fixed dramatically off into space, eyes so bright, bright blue in the light of the star, shoulders braced against the wall, legs crossed. no handcuffs, no sense in bothering. you guess lovelace isn’t afraid he’s going to coldcock her with his stupid fucking stump; not like you haven’t seen the way it still hurts him, the way he sucks his breath in through his teeth sometimes like he’s still got someone to be strong for.

it’s a laugh, then, that punches its way out between your teeth instead of an answer—you’re laughing so hard you hear it echo back a dozen times, a dozen daniels all unraveling, clutch at your chest like you’re choking on it because really? that’s—is he— _really?_

“i am,” he says, _“really.”_ and if there’s one thing he’s still so good at it’s pushing your buttons and making you his goose-step yessir toadie, so eager to please and play right into his goddamn plan even when you know it’ll hurt, even when you both know you want it to. you cross the room so fast you don’t quite remember doing it, and you’re floating so close you can see the curve of the star, of the window, in the whites of his eyes. he is so calm in the face of your rage and you’re so goddamn _mad about it._ he’s down a team, a ship, a fucking _body part_ and he still looks like he knows exactly what the fuck he’s doing, like he can read you like a goddamn book, recite you like a _long story short_ and it bubbles up in you like isopropyl nitrate, detonation velocity fit to blow right through your skin if only to drown out the fact that you still want him to _tell you what to do, how to fix this—_

you want to hurt him, you want to _fuck_ him—you jerk forward, pin what's left of his wrist to the wall with one hand, box him in and keep you both steady with the other as best as the handcuffs will let you while his spare hand _(his only hand, hate him all you want but the smell of meat, the look on his face, the way his voice sounded; these things you will never forget)_ fumbles into your flight suit, rakes down your chest. you bite at his jaw, his neck, his chest, anything to wound him, to make him make a goddamn sound and he lets you—he _lets_ you, because he thinks it counts as an apology or because it's another one of his stupid fucking games but he lets you hurt him and that, _that_ is the worst part.

there’s blood, after a while. his teeth catch your lip or you bite his on purpose, you’re not sure, but it floats like a string of pearls, beads up so pretty and glows purple in the light of the goddamn star. his hand on you is just right, tight and warm and perfect and you catch your breath with your face pressed against his neck, feel the ghost of his other hand in yours and you squeeze his wrist that much tighter, fit your teeth into marks you’ve already left just because you can. his breath curls against your hair and he doesn’t stop, not until you’re gasping into the hollow of his throat, not until your hand falls from his wrist to dig into his back, until your mouth tastes like a goddamn mistake and something sour settles in the heart of you. when he wipes his hand on your flight suit you turn your head to the side and watch the bruises on his throat in the starlight to make sure they _stay where they fucking are,_ and you wish for a clone of him to kill again and again until you don’t feel like you’re coming apart at the goddamn seams, like you’re unraveling, until there’s a version of the both of you where you _get this right._

but the star is silent and the universe’s worst radio isn’t taking your requests and your head feels like all of tchaikovsky’s cannons going off all at once while the conductor is out for a smoke break and the soloist is nowhere to be found and this, this is your show now.

this is you, tired and hurting and not quite alive.

this is you, climbing up the food chain.

**Author's Note:**

> addendum: what the fuck can you believe imposter has been spelt with a second "o" this entire time? i feel like i just came across some bernstein bears bullshit honestly


End file.
